


a mirror, darkly

by sweetsinnerchild



Series: The Konoha Performance Incentive [8]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Childhood Trauma, Dark kakashi, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gang Rape, Hatake Kakashi-centric, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Lack of Dealing with Said Trauma, M/M, Surprisingly for a centric fic Kakashi does not go through the rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 12:35:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18717205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetsinnerchild/pseuds/sweetsinnerchild
Summary: "Dad," he said again, as if his father would stand up and not look like, like - like that. Overpowered and unworthy. Weak."Go to Minato," his father ordered - no, no, not quite. Orders implied authority, and there was no authority to be had when prostrated before another.No, his father had begged.Cruelty begets cruelty, and this world is very cruel indeed. Set as a prelude beforea shining knightand generally KPI-verse compliant.





	a mirror, darkly

**Author's Note:**

> And to close off the series, why Kakashi is, in drelfina's words, bugfuck crazy.
> 
> Again, please read the warnings, they're all very very pertinent, this is absolutely not a happy fic.
> 
> This fic spawned from intense discussion over how Kakashi, a man made less emo by his promise to Obito, turned out so terrible, and why would he focus on poor Iruka like my dog focuses on parma ham when he's not allowed to have some. In Perks & Benefits (also within the series), Kakashi thankfully gets therapy - in this timeline, he absolutely and unfortunately does not.
> 
> If familiar with KPI-verse, part one to three is compliant with the entire verse, while part four is compliant only to a shining knight.

i. Sakumo

This was what Kakashi remembered:

His father, prone on the ground with three people surrounding him. His father, with his clothes torn to the side and marks all over, white hair disheveled and twisted in an unyielding grip. His father, looking up to see Kakashi in the doorway and his countenance twisted into hopeless despair. 

The White Fang, brought to his knees. 

"Dad," and his voice was young then, high-pitched and nasal. Unbroken. 

Someone shifted, and his father gasped, shuddering. His father, in pain, and Kakashi could only stand in front of him, uncomprehending. 

_Genius_ , they said. _Prodigy_. For all of their praise, he would not understand what he saw that day until much later. 

"Dad," he said again, as if his father would stand up and not look like, like - like that. Overpowered and unworthy. Weak. 

"Go to Minato," his father ordered - no, no, not quite. Orders implied authority, and there was no authority to be had when prostrated before another. 

No, his father had begged. 

"Minato," his father begged again. "Kakashi, go - "

His words cut off with a single yank, exposing his throat. The stark paleness of his skin made it look like paper, on which Kakashi had to trace lines on in class. This is where you would cut someone's throat, sensei had said. _This is where the battle is won_ , and the red slash of the pen had looked almost like blood. 

"It's his kid," someone hissed. 

"So?" Another one snorted and his hips moved. Back and forth, back and forth. "We knew he had a kid."

"Besides," his eyes, dark and beady, swept over Kakashi. "Splitting image of his father, isn't he?"

A wave of cold horror washed over him, leaving the residue of revulsion in its wake, sticky and grimy and indelible. He only realised that he ran away when he collapsed against Minato-nii-san's door, tears and snot smeared against his face, and Minato opened the door. 

"I'm not like him," Kakashi choked, because Minato needed to know, needed to know he was not Hatake Sakumo and nothing like Hatake Sakumo and he wouldn't, he wouldn't be. He couldn't be. "I'm not, I'm not, _I'm not_ \- "

(He found his father later, a red slash across his abdomen and entrails spilling out, rotting in the summer sun. The academy had taught nothing about the stench of death and pale white maggots writhing in the flesh; nothing about unseeing eyes and stiff hands curled around the hilt of a blade.

_I'm sorry_ , the note read.

Kakashi had his face. He should be sorry.)

His father's funeral was small, as befitting of his disgrace. Kakashi had known of the failed mission and its aftermath of war, having borne the brunt of the sneers by virtue of association with his father, and the suicide had dragged the Hatake name futher into the mud. If Kakashi had known that his father would do something so shameful, he would have cut his throat himself ( _red slash against paper-white skin_ ) when it was bared to him - it would have spared Kakashi further humiliation. 

Maybe it would have replaced his title - instead of the White Fang's son, he'd be known instead as the White Fang's killer. Another distinction to further distance himself from his father.

But he had not, so now he stood before Konoha with his father's besmirched mantle hanging heavy off the slope of his shoulders. There was no way to rip the blood out of his body, to let it flow down the river and cleanse him of this dirt - so the only thing left is to obscure anything that would remind anyone who met him of his father. Kakashi could do that much. 

And so he tied a black cloth around his face, leaving his eyes only to see. His makeshift mask was warm against his nose and mouth, a damp oppressive heat - but every time he wanted to pull it down, to take a breath of fresh air -

_Splitting image of his father, isn't he?_

The mask stayed on. 

* * *

ii. Minato

Months after his father's funeral, some jounins tried to approach Kakashi. Minato had stepped in so quickly, putting Kakashi's slight frame behind the bulk of his body - and the wave of killing intent was so strong the jounins paled and never approached him again. 

"Minato-san," he said, and Minato glanced down at him. 

"Kakashi-kun," he said, his face drawn tight. "I need to explain some things to you."

Minato over the years would make mistakes of his own, but he did not err here. Kakashi would learn that day about the incentives Konoha put into place for its jounins, a dog-eat-dog society that kept its shinobi sharp and ever vigilant. Jounins were the elite, Minato explained, and Konoha often sent them on dangerous missions - it was only fair that they were compensated for the risk and their efforts. 

Kakashi listened, then frowned. 

"I'm not a chuunin," he pointed out. 

Minato's lip twisted unhappily. 

"Your father..." He started, and Kakashi should have known. "He... Many people are angry at him."

"I know," Kakashi bites out. 

And now that Hatake Sakumo was dead, Hatake Kakashi was his perfect substitute. _His splitting image_ \- Kakashi wanted to drive a kunai through his own ears whenever he remembered those words. 

"Kakashi-kun. It would be best if you..." Minato paused. "I can protect you. I will protect you. But you have to be wary."

There was a sense of barely palpable relief, buried deep under the muddied cloud of Kakashi's emotions - until Minato said, "it's the least I can do for Sakumo."

Sakumo's son, again. The disgust roiled through him, clawing against his ribs before it settled back deep in his spine, a familiar friend by now with every thought and mention of his father. He knew he was supposed to be grateful for Minato's protection when Minato could have thrown him to the wolves, that his father's mantle on this occasion had shielded him instead of crushing him down into the dirt -  but Minato in this regard was no better than the others, seeing Sakumo where Kakashi stood, seeing weakness where there was none. 

_I'm not like him._

And how long could Kakashi hide in Minato's shadow? The perils of a shinobi's life aside, as a jounin Minato was often sent on dangerous missions. How would Minato protect him then if Kakashi remained marked for his father's actions, if Minato wasn't there? Would he have to orbit Minato wherever he went, jumping at every shinobi that approached him?

No, Kakashi decided later that night, staring at the walls of the room Minato had offered him, unwilling to let Kakashi live in an empty house. He could not rely on Minato. He could not afford to rely on him nor anyone else, not when his fate remained dictated by their opinions of his father. Kakashi was no one but himself, and staying under Minato's protection would only mark him as vulnerable, weak, a neck left exposed once the cloth was pulled away. 

The answer here was to make jounin. Anything less than jounin was a risk, especially when people were approaching Kakashi despite him being a pre-genin, as if he was a chuunin himself; and now chuunin for all of its advocated risks meant nothing when you were a target regardless of rank. If anything, chuunin now meant the step closest to jounin, a step best taken while he still had an extra eye on his own back. His father had made jounin at nineteen, and gained the moniker of the White Fang at twenty-five - Kakashi would have to be faster and stronger in every way, to outshine his father's reputation, to drown out every reference to Sakumo with his own merits alone.

There was only so much blood could give, and at some point someone had to recognize that. 

So the very next day, Kakashi proved so. In a taijutsu demonstration with the teacher, he swept at the man’s bad knee, causing him to stagger backwards, and followed up with a series of jabs. The match ended with Kakashi perched between his teacher’s shoulder blades and Kakashi’s hand squeezing once and lightly around his throat. A death sentence in the real world.

“I yield,” the teacher had said, eyes wide and obviously shaken - unprepared, Kakashi thought unflatteringly, a reflection of how the truly useless the Academy was. If these were his instructors…

He took the graduation exams within the end of the year - laughably easy when all he had to do was create several clones. The teacher he had defeated gave him the hitai-ate and did not look him in the eye, and Kakashi walked away from the Academy as a genin without ever looking back.

* * *

iii. Hiruzen

Genin. Chuunin. And finally, jounin.

Kakashi closed his eye and pressed the palm of his hand into Obito’s. _See the future in my place_ , he had said, and Kakashi had tried. Tried to believe in a future where saving a comrade was more important than the mission, tried to make Obito’s dream into a reality, but, but -

Rin’s blood on his hands. _Comrade-killer_ , they hissed, and Rin had only celebrated the other day when she finally made jounin. Now, the bloodied band in his possession only marked him as one who flaunted the rules, and killed a fellow elite. Only Minato-sensei believed him when he told him what happened: they had stepped foot within the village’s borders and Rin had began convulsing, her chakra lashing out and bony spines breaking white and bloody through her scalp, and had lunged at Kakashi after screaming herself hoarse.

Kakashi only had years of paranoia and sharp reflexes. Kakashi only had a kunai in his hand.

And now he was standing in front of Minato and Kushina, their bodies crumpled and grey under the settling dust. There was nothing graceful in death, with their blood spilt across the ground and the cleave of a blade splitting flesh apart - but there never was. They were shinobi enough to know.

(A few paces away, a baby laid. It was too still, too quiet to be alive, and Kakashi would never know that it was stillborn - he would only know that it was called Naruto because Minato had told him so.)

Minato had continued protecting Kakashi even when he made jounin at twelve, when by all rights Kakashi was capable of protecting himself and did so. He kept his guard up at all times, summoning Pakkun and the others to guard while he slept, and stayed vigilant against both his chuunin and jounin peers. Anyone who tried had learnt quickly that while Kakashi held the title of Comrade-killer, he did not kill. No, Kakashi preferred information, especially if some upstart chuunin was targeting him, and preferred to dissuade repeat attempts. Killing was a form of dissuasion, that was true, but they were shinobi. Anyone could kill.

Maiming, though. Leaving them weak and vulnerable, a trail of blood in the forest to follow. Someone else might finish the job, but everyone would know: Kakashi had put them there.

Anyone could kill, but Kakashi would maim.

But Minato was dead and although Kakashi no longer depended on him for his protection, he felt keenly the loss of many other things: the heavy weight of a hand on his head, the comfortable slide of an arm around his shoulders. The future that Obito had believed in was gone with the last person Kakashi would have died defending. This was the future Obito got to see, and Kakashi could only be bitter and weary and far too old.

He didn’t even get the chance. That had been ripped away in the form of a barrier, impenetrable and unyielding, erected on the orders of Sarutobi Hiruzen. 

The third Hokage stepped into the clearing, his eyes sweeping over the scene. Kakashi removed his hand from Obito’s eye, the removal of pressure a relief on its own, and turned to meet the man - the weight of his years curving the hunch of his shoulders, and no less dangerous for it.

“They’re dead.” Kakashi said. It felt like delivering a report, cold and impersonal.

“Yes.”

“I could have helped them.” Maybe, maybe not - the Kyuubi was a force of nature unto itself, but Kakashi could have given them a fighting chance. Kakashi could have died with them.

It didn't matter, because Hiruzen said, “yes.”

Kakashi breathed out. The third Hokage, the Professor, a God of Shinobi. These titles meant an enemy that could not be defeated, not even by the copy-nin Kakashi. 

These titles meant nothing to someone who should have been dead.

“You didn’t let me.” His instincts screamed at him, _you will not survive_ , but everything was drowned out by the pounding of his heart. Rin, Minato - everyone that Obito ever loved was now dead. Everyone that Kakashi loved was now dead.

And it was obvious, wasn't it - that Hiruzen, a shinobi trapped by an aging body, couldn’t quite let go of his grip on power when his retirement was forced upon him. Kakashi might have been Minato’s successor, but he was not on Hiruzen’s level - nor was there anyone else. With all the ninjas on par or close to his level perishing in the wake of the Kyuubi’s rampage, Hiruzen’s only obstacle would be the new generation he claimed to protect. Kakashi was nothing compared to Hiruzen, barely a threat to be noted. Not yet.

Maybe it was utterly foolish of him but maybe not - his relationship with Minato was well-known, and acting otherwise would only be a wasted effort at deceit. And so Kakashi let go; let his killing intent fill the clearing and press into the cracks within the rubble, press into the space shaped as where Minato and Kushina and Naruto was supposed to be. 

Let Hiruzen know, let him remember. Kakashi will not forgive.

Hiruzen stood, immovable as a boulder in a torrent of Kakashi’s emotions. Hiruzen looked at Kakashi, and Kakashi wondered how the man viewed him. Was Kakashi Minato’s grieving protege? The son of the disgraced Hatake Sakumo? Or the man that would kill Hiruzen one day?

(When would anyone ever _see_ Kakashi?)

Hiruzen stood, and said only, “yes.”

* * *

iv. Iruka

Years later, Kakashi watched as Hiruzen died at the hands of his former student, and the village was left without a Hokage.

Being the Hokage never mattered to Kakashi, not when he had little to love in Konoha. It had been nothing but practicality that led Kakashi to stay with the village, to place himself where it would be most opportune to slice a kunai through the old man’s neck, or a chokuto through his gut. And perhaps Hiruzen had hoped that promoting Kakashi to ANBU would be either a placation or a death sentence, but Kakashi had only returned to Konoha over and over, like a blade stained bloody sliding into its hilt. Each time, he had given his report personally to the man, as all ANBUs captains were required to after their mission; each time, he would remind Hiruzen that he still did not forget his promise to him years ago.

And maybe Kakashi also had a death wish of his own, to let his killing intent flare so brazenly in front of the Hokage’s ANBU guards. But they’d never done anything about it, and neither had Hiruzen. Kakashi knew that those in the guard rotation murmured that perhaps it was amusement that stayed Hiruzen’s hand, and Kakashi had never stopped since.

Perhaps Hiruzen found it funny now, that it was Orochimaru and not Kakashi who managed to shuffle him off the mortal coil - or perhaps Hiruzen never thought Kakashi a threat in the first place. But it didn’t matter now, because Hiruzen was dead. Even if Kakashi slid a kunai through his corpse and left it for the crows to peck at, even if Kakashi gathered lightning into his hand and butchered the remains unrecognizable, it would not matter because Kakashi was not taking away anything that mattered, not anymore. Death had only made Hiruzen more untouchable than before, and and those under his protection more withdrawn and wary now that their strongest bastion has crumbled away. The Sarutobi clan had become more vigilant against outsiders, even going so far as to cull connections with Ebisu and other jounins now that none of them could be trusted. 

_The Sarutobis were guarded_ , Kakashi thought idly as Asuma left the jounin breakroom with Kurenai in tow (the one connection not casted away, and that was telling). Both jounins had looked impassively at the scene before them; both had turned away. _But those dear to the fallen Hokage were not only those in his clan_.

Case in point: the Hokage's fucktoy. 

Kakashi had never paid much attention to chuunins after he had left the rank: his reports had been made almost exclusively to Hiruzen, and written reports had been foisted off onto his subordinates. He had little interest in claiming a fucktoy then, content to accost them only for one-night-stands for the purposes of sexual release, and the chuunins in turn had little incentive to approach him when they would rather avoid. The chuunins knew their place, after all - that is, all except for Umino Iruka. 

Kakashi could still remember the way the man stepped forward, voice ringing clear as a clarion call as he protested Kakashi's nomination of his genin team. _They were only children_ , he had said, and all the while he had stared Kakashi straight in the eye without a trace of fear. Kakashi had first catalogued his appearance - not an Uchiha, not with skin that tan - and then his eye had caught on the lack of a banner around his arm. 

The man was not even a jounin, and he dared to speak against one so brazenly - but before Kakashi could even think of reacting, Hiruzen had shifted, his stance facing towards Kakashi, and Kakashi suddenly _knew_. 

Umino Iruka exploded into Kakashi's awareness over the course of one day.  The Hokage's fucktoy, and arrogant with it - talking back to jounins and demanding their compliance without consequences. There was no love for him among the elites, and no loyalty among the chuunins - the man seemed content to spend his time with the Hokage, and his students as an Academy teacher. 

( _Useless_ , something whispered, underlined by red lines on white paper.)

But Kakashi did not live this long by ignoring underneath the underneath. There was no malice in the way Umino ordered a jounin to rewrite his report, no smug superiority in the way he rejected the applications for missions. There was only sincerity, in his eagerness and annoyance and every other emotion in between, and any allusions made to his patron had been nothing less than professional. It was suddenly clear that Umino did not know of the society he lived in, Hiruzen's robes around his shoulders both shielding and obstructing his view - and where Minato had not erred, Hiruzen decidedly did. And that led them to here, to now: to what Kakashi could have been, had he been content to stay under Minato's shadow, made manifest in the chuunin before him. 

The product of Hiruzen's mistakes, and Hiruzen wasn't here to correct it any more; wasn't here to prevent Kakashi from claiming him for all of Umino's protests. 

_I do not belong to anyone_ , Umino had snarled, incandescent with overwhelming rage and sheer ignorance, even after Kakashi had pinned him against a wall and fucked his thighs. Umino had fought back, all snarls and claws, heedless of the way Kakashi could have snapped his neck for all the trouble he gave him. It had been then that Kakashi realised that this particular reaction was limited to Umino alone, because any chuunin with a lick of sense would let Kakashi at them and wait for it to be over. 

Umino fought like he had a future, a future where someone would defend him even though they were not obligated to - a future none of them had. The only reason that Kakashi could fathom that Umino would be allowed to think this way for so long, was that Sarutobi Hiruzen had a soft spot; a soft spot that Kakashi could drive a kunai into with no repercussions from a dead man. 

_I do not belong to anyone_ ; Kakashi smiled mamba-like under his mask and acquiesced.

And now all Kakashi had to do was watch as Kobayashi Tomo twisted his hand harder into Umino's hair and yanked it back for better leverage, for Umino to choke on his cock. 

For someone who insisted that he was not Hiruzen's fucktoy (and how revulsed he looked at the very notion, words like _father figure_  and _parent_  rushing out of him like they would protect him from the image that he had created in his own ignorance), Umino took cock beautifully. Kakashi had taken out a book to pretend at disinterest, but his eye kept drifting back towards dark strands wrapped around a gloved fist; the line of Umino's throat, stretched and bare. The way Umino kept looking at the door, seeds of burgeoning hope forming with every jounin that walked into the room and bursting like salmon roe across the tongue as they walked out without lifting a finger to help. Kakashi could only savour the aftertaste of despair flashing quick and ephemeral across Umino's face as his chances of rescue dwindled away before his eyes, and as the cycle began all over again with the creak of the door. 

And for every jounin that walked closer, hands unzipping their pants and eyes hard and hungry...

(There was only so many times a man could fight before he was ground down, like waves crashing against a jagged rock and smoothing its edges over time.)

Kobayashi came, grunting deep in his throat, and Umino squeezed his eyes shut as cum filled his own. It seemed as though he had learnt his lesson, by the way nothing had dribbled out at the side of his mouth - some jounins had taken to tutting at the mess he had made and forcing him to clean it with his tongue. With his hands tied behind his back, hands apart to prevent seals, it would easier to swallow it all.

“That’s what you get, you little chuunin bitch,” Kobayashi said roughly as he pulled himself out and zipped himself back into his pants. The words were little more than a slap to Umino, evident through his flinch. Kobayashi nodded once to Kakashi as he walked out of the room, and Kakashi merely flipped to the next page in his book.

It should be about now, he expected. After all, he was only here as long as Umino wanted to be - even if it took much longer than he expected for the man to break, with the setting sun shading the room in bars of sunset orange through the blinds of the window. Perhaps masochistic, but mostly stubborn - maybe Umino would be kind enough to service the night shift, when the ANBUs were most likely to come in.

“Kakashi-san.”

_Ah_.

A cough, wet and raspy. “Kakashi-san,” Umino said again, his voice quiet and hoarse from the cocks he had taken into his mouth and down his throat; Kakashi had not been counting. He wondered if Umino had. 

“Yes,” Kakashi said, his voice inflected up in the tone of a question. He was not above waiting for Umino to beg, to accept the reality of this society. This was the legacy his precious mentor had left him, this was the result of Umino’s folly.

Umino was silent yet again, and out of the corner of Kakashi’s eye he could see him shuddering into himself. There was no righteous indignation left in him, not on his knees - but Kakashi was sure that he would see it again. This would not break Umino, not yet. But for now, he needed Umino to learn how to tie the noose around his own neck before Kakashi would yank on it, over and over again.

“Please,” Umino said, words ripped out of him like pages from a beloved book. “Kakashi-san, please.”

“Please what?”

He hoped Umino would not tell him to stop. That was not the point of this, not at all.

“Please…” Umino’s breathing quickened, growing heavier, thicker. On the verge of tears, perhaps. “Please, enough.”

Kakashi shook his head, slow and mocking. He supposed that he could give Umino a hint, he thought rather charitably. 

“You don’t belong to anybody, Iruka-sensei,” Kakashi said lightly. “I couldn’t possibly presume.”

The noise that came out of Umino sounded particularly like a sob. Maybe Umino needed time to think, Kakashi allowed, but Kakashi certainly wouldn’t stop the next jounin coming into the room if any did come by. It didn’t take long, because Umino did have a brain between his ears even if he hadn't been using it for the entirety of his life. 

“Please let me belong to you,” Umino finally whispered as if the very thought was scraped out of him, from the very bottom and brought out in the fading light.

Kakashi snapped his book shut, and looked at Umino, still on his knees and eyes bright with unshed tears. His hair was disheveled, falling and framing his face when pulled out of the usual ponytail, and the smear of white against lips rubbed raw made him look more than appealing. It was not hard to be aroused with the sounds of repeated fellatio next to him - and it was not hard now, for his cock to give an interested jolt at the thought of rubbing away at the smear with a thumb.

He stood up and Umino flinched away as he sauntered closer, each step slow and measured, until Kakashi finally stood in front of him where various others had in the previous hours. Kakashi reached out, trailing a knuckle across the bruise blooming purple across Umino’s cheekbone - a proper retaliation for attempting to bite down.

“I suppose I could be convinced,” Kakashi suggested, expectant.

“Please,” Umino said again, softly, brokenly, tilting his head up to look at Kakashi ( _straight in the eye, no fear_ , that day felt so long ago) - and Kakashi’s breath caught in his throat. His hands went down, to take himself out, and Umino said, yet again, “please.”

“Convince me,” Kakashi murmured, and pushed his cock into Umino’s waiting mouth.

Umino kept his eyes on Kakashi, even as Kakashi ran a hand through Umino's hair and twisted it in a grip of his own, unyielding; even as Kakashi moved his hips - back and forth, back and forth - allowing Kakashi to slip his cock out and in further into the heat of Umino’s mouth. Umino looked at him, and all Kakashi could think was how Umino saw him, saw him for Kakashi who was doing this to him, Kakashi who brought him to the jounin break room, broke him in, and now had a hand in his hair and a cock down his throat.

Kakashi, not Sakumo’s son - Sakumo had been weak, just like Iruka was, and Kakashi was not, when he was doing this to Umino. Kakashi, not Minato’s protege or Rin’s murderer, comrade-killer.

Just Kakashi.

Kakashi came into Umino - no, Iruka, because Iruka was now his, all his, _mine_ \- Iruka’s mouth, shuddering into the wet warmth surrounding his cock; and Kakashi wanted to keep his fingers threaded through Iruka’s hair, dark locks twisted tight in his hand; wanted to keep Iruka looking at him, seeing him as he was; wanted to break Iruka down and away from being the Hokage’s fucktoy and remake him into something new, something wholly Kakashi’s. His other hand slid down Iruka’s face and to his throat, and he felt how Iruka swallowed him down, all without breaking eye contact with Kakashi.

He pulled his cock away, sated. Iruka was still looking at him, desperation, despair and hope condensed in one expression, and Kakashi reached out to wipe at the smear of white right next to his lips.

“Consider me convinced, sensei."

**Author's Note:**

> Suggested BG music: [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNIsY6JdUw)
> 
> Someone mentioned Hiruzen's motivation for not telling Iruka, and why wouldn't he just pass Iruka on like a piece of jewellery. Drel and I supposed that Hiruzen's an old man who wanted something bright in his life, wanted to shield Iruka from this terrible world because he could at least do one thing right, and that by not treating Iruka like a piece of property to be inherited he'd be respecting that chuunins are not property - and that if he told Asuma, his son, about how he'd inherit Iruka, Asuma would definitely tell Iruka and especially after he realises that Iruka didn't know about the KPI. Also, he and Asuma weren't getting along terribly well, but after they made up, he would have told Asuma. Later, later, and eventually too late: as we all know, and as Hiruzen is wont to do: he fucked up. 
> 
> Other than that, I'm glad these series is over even though drel is the one contributing 70% of the actual content and I have literally only two fics. Please read their fic for a chance of everyone being happier, in a terrible world.


End file.
